Tommy Robinson remanded in custody ahead of court date
Buy Now An error occurred. Buy Now An error occurred. Book Novotel Hotel Tommy Robinson remanded in custody ahead of court date Banzai Japan Music Video Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been taken into custody ahead of a major demonstration by his supporters in London this weekend. Kent Police said a 41-year-old man had been arrested at the direction of the High Court and would appear at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday in connection with contempt of court allegations. The force said Tommy Robinson has also been charged under his real name of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon with allegedly refusing to provide his phone’s PIN to officers who had stopped and questioned him at the border in Folkestone in July. He was granted bail over that allegation and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 13 November. Book Novotel Hotel The alleged offence under the Terrorism Act is not an accusation that he was planning an attack and relates solely to police powers to examine phones at ports as part of investigations. Mr Yaxley-Lennon is facing potential jail at Monday’s hearing on contempt of court charges. It is alleged he breached an injunction not to repeat lies about a Syrian refugee which had been previously ruled by a judge to be defamatory. Shortly after he entered Folkestone police station on Friday afternoon, the official Tommy Robinson X account confirmed that he had been taken into custody. Banzai Japan Music Video The move to detain Mr Yaxley-Lennon comes less than 24 hours before a major policing operation to contain potentially thousands of his supporters. For weeks, and posting from abroad, he had been urging them to come to London on Saturday, claiming that the state was trying to silence him for speaking out about the impact of immigrants on the UK. Metropolitan Police commanders have put in place a significant operation to contain the protest and separate it from a counter-demonstration. Both the Met and British Transport Police are due to be supported by officers from other forces across the country. The Met said there would be a “significant police presence” to ensure the two groups were kept apart. It is not clear how many people will attend but a similar gathering in London in July saw thousands of Robinson supporters in Trafalgar Square. The activist, who founded the now-defunct English Defence League, has been accused by critics of whipping up tensions during the summer’s riots. Mr Yaxley-Lennon has not been charged with any offences relating to the disturbances. Book Novotel Hotel Banzai Japan Social Media Fumi Fujisaki Idol Riko Ueno Idol Rino Ibusuki Idol Yunagi Nino Idol Shiori Fujisaki Idol Kana Ichinose Idol Hoshino Arice Idol Sasa Sasagawa Idol Kosaka Yuu Idol Tsukumo Aira Idol Maika Ando Idol Yuuki Mochimaru Idol
Tommy Robinson jailed for contempt of court
Buy Now An error occurred. Buy Now An error occurred. Book Novotel Hotel Tommy Robinson jailed for contempt of court Banzai Japan Music Video Far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been jailed for 18 months after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, admitted 10 breaches of a High Court order made in 2021, during a hearing at Woolwich Crown Court. Lawyers for the solicitor general accused the 41-year-old of “undermining” the rule of law. Passing sentence, Judge Mr Justice Johnson said the breaches of the injunction, which prevented Yaxley-Lennon from repeating the allegations, were not “accidental, negligent or merely reckless” and the custodial threshold was “amply crossed”. Book Novotel Hotel The hearing on Monday was the culmination of events that date back to October 2018. That month, a video went viral showing how Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian in West Yorkshire, had been attacked by another teenager at school. Yaxley-Lennon then posted his own response to one million Facebook followers alleging that his investigation had established that Mr Hijazi was a violent thug, a claim that was untrue. The Yaxley-Lennon video spread widely and the Syrian teenager and his family received death threats. Three years later, Mr Hijazi won £100,000 in damages when the High Court ruled Yaxley-Lennon’s claims against him had amounted to defamation. Banzai Japan Music Video The court imposed an injunction on Yaxley-Lennon, banning him from making the false claims again. In February 2023, Yaxley-Lennon, who founded the long-defunct English Defence League (EDL), began repeating the claims and went on to post online a film claiming he had been “silenced” by the state. That film may have been viewed at least 47 million times. Eventually, this July, the anti-Islam activist showed the film to thousands of his supporters in London’s Trafalgar Square, saying he would not be silenced. The following day he left the country. Aidan Eardley KC, for Solicitor General Sarah Sackman, told the court that Yaxley-Lennon had intended to repeat the false allegations, despite the injunction, and then take “evasive” measures. “This is a high culpability case because of the high number of breaches,” said Mr Eardley. “It is a continuing breach, the material is still out there and some of it is under the defendant’s control.” Sasha Wass KC, for Yaxley-Lennon, said he was a journalist who had been following his principles and was a passionate believer in free speech. “This defendant has been neither sly nor dishonest nor seeking gain for himself,” she said. She said that he was such a controversial figure he may be placed in solitary confinement by prison governors, as had occurred the last time he had been jailed, and there was medical evidence he had previously suffered trauma, panic attacks and nightmares. Jailing Yaxley-Lennon for 18 months, Mr Justice Johnson said: “In a democratic society underpinned by the rule of law, court orders must be obeyed. “Nobody is above the law. Nobody can pick or choose which laws or which injunctions they obey, or which they do not. “Even if they believe that an injunction is… contrary to their views they must comply with the injunction. “They are not entitled to set themselves up as the judge in their own court. Otherwise the administration of justice and rule of law would break down.” The judge said that the contempt of court had been aggravated because the defendant had repeated the claims after the beginning of proceedings against him – and he had not taken steps to stop the false claims continuing to be in circulation. The sentence could in future be cut by four months if the defendant showed the court that he had taken steps to remove the offending film. But the judge added: “The defendant has not shown any inclination to comply with the injunction in the future. All of his actions suggest that he regards himself as above the law.” This case was the fourth contempt case he has faced, having previously received a suspended sentence and a six-month jail term. Yaxley-Lennon has been separately charged with failing to unlock his phone for police when he was stopped and questioned at a port under counter-terrorism powers. He will next appear in court in relation to that allegation in November. Book Novotel Hotel Banzai Japan Social Media Fumi Fujisaki Idol Riko Ueno Idol Rino Ibusuki Idol Yunagi Nino Idol Shiori Fujisaki Idol Kana Ichinose Idol Hoshino Arice Idol Sasa Sasagawa Idol Kosaka Yuu Idol Tsukumo Aira Idol Maika Ando Idol Yuuki Mochimaru Idol
How an iPad dug up from the Thames solved museum thieves’ murder plot
Buy Now An error occurred. Buy Now An error occurred. Book Novotel Hotel How an iPad dug up from the Thames solved museum thieves’ murder plot Banzai Japan Music Video A Ming vase stolen from a Swiss museum. A shooting at a comedian’s house in Woodford, east London. The robbery of a luxury apartment in Sevenoaks, Kent. These seemingly unconnected events were all part of a web of international organised crime that police untangled after a six-year-long investigation. A key piece of evidence – an iPad, found under an inch of sand on the foreshore of the River Thames just downstream from the O2 Arena. Book Novotel Hotel Its discovery was pivotal to the investigation that has led to three people being found guilty at the Old Bailey of the near-assassination of one of Britain’s most notorious armed robbers. When found by a police officer with a metal detector on a cold November morning last year, the iPad was found caked in mud having been underwater for more than five years. Forensics were able to clean it and open the Sim tray – which still contained a pink Vodafone Sim card. Call data that was subsequently salvaged provided damning evidence on three men – Louis Ahearne, Stewart Ahearne and Daniel Kelly – who were all also involved in a heist at a museum in Switzerland a month earlier. “I’ve questioned this a lot,” Det Supt Matthew Webb ponders. “Is it calamitous blunders tripping them up or was it just they were so blasé they wouldn’t get caught?” Banzai Japan Music Video A ‘meticulously planned’ assassination plot The Ahearne brothers and Kelly first caught the attention of police after gunshots pierced the silence of a late summer evening in an affluent Woodford area on 11 July 2019. Six bullets tore through a glass conservatory at a luxury property owned by comedian Russell Kane that had been rented out to Paul Allen. One severed one of Allen’s fingers, the other went through his throat and became lodged in his spinal cord, leaving him struggling to breathe and bleeding profusely. “He’s been shot, he’s been shot!” Allen’s partner, Jade Bovington, screamed. As she frantically called an ambulance, neighbours and a private security guard heard the cries and rushed to render first aid. One eyewitness described seeing an unidentified man vault a low wall, run between some bushes and get straight into a waiting vehicle which immediately sped off. To this day, Allen relies on a wheelchair, paralysed below his upper chest. Allen gained notoriety as one of the ringleaders of what remains Britain’s biggest ever armed robbery. In 2006, Allen was part of a balaclava-wearing gang toting guns including an AK-47 assault rifle who threatened to kill staff at the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. They stole £53m in Bank of England cash notes – leaving behind £154m which would not fit into their lorry. Allen fled to Morocco four days later, but was arrested in Rabat alongside friend and fellow robber Lee Murray, who remains in jail in nearby Tiflet. In January 2008, Allen was extradited to the UK and subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison. Allen was released in 2016 and moved back to his roots in south-east London. But he relocated to Woodford with his partner and two younger children after a gunman opened fire at him and his pregnant daughter in the doorway of their Woolwich home in September 2018. Ten months later, Allen almost died after those two bullets hit him as he stood in the kitchen of his Woodford haven. Prosecutors argued the Ahearnes and Kelly were equally culpable in the plot to murder Allen – which involved a hired car, surveillance and unregistered pay-as-you-go phones. “This was a meticulously researched and planned assassination attempt by a team of men well versed in the level of criminality to pull it off,” prosecutor Michael Shaw KC said. In discovering how the three knew where to find Allen, police would uncover their criminality stretched into mainland Europe. The Geneva job and the Mayfair hotel sting Just one month before the shooting, the Ahearne brothers and Kelly stood outside the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva equipped with a sledgehammer, angle grinders and crowbars. Within seconds of forcing their way through the front door, they shattered glass casings housing 14th Century Chinese Ming Dynasty antiques. Three items were seized – a rare pomegranate vase; a doucai-style wine cup and a porcelain bowl – and had a combined insured value of £2.8m. In their hurry to flee, Stewart scraped his stomach against the sides of the hole the gang had made in the front wooden door – leaving traces of his DNA. He also hired the getaway car, a Renault Koleos from Avis at Geneva Airport. Louis was caught on CCTV filming the inside and outside of the museum the day before the raid. Within days of returning to south-east London with the stolen goods, the trio set about attempting to dispose of the items they had pinched. The brothers flew to Hong Kong with Kelly as they tried to sell one of the stolen items at an auction house. The auction house tipped off police in London, who were able to send undercover officers posing as art dealers to catch some other gang members in a sting operation as two of them tried to sell another plundered item which had been concealed in a JD Sports bag. During a seven-week trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutors argued that international burglary proved the Ahearnes and Kelly were “at the top end” of criminality. But little did police know while pursuing the stolen antiquities, the three would leave behind near-enough similar clues to give away their presence in the Woodford shooting. The hire car and the Oasis purchase In the hours after the shooting, the crime scene in Woodford was forensically examined. Six bullet casings fired from a Glock self-loading handgun were found, as were scuff marks on the